HIGHLIGHTS

Largest collision of black holes

A team of scientists have detected the gravitational waves that resulted from the largest collision of black holes ever observed and that formed a new black hole about eighty times larger than the sun.

This and 3 other black hole fusions were detected by an international team of scientists formed by the Advanced laser interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the U.S. and the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Efe news reported on Tuesday.

In July 2017, the fusion of the black hole binary system was detected over 9 billion light years away and resulted in the largest black hole known , the Anu said in a statement.

“This event also had black holes spinning the fastest of all mergers determined so far. it’s also by far the most distant merger determined,” said Susan Scott, a physicist at the Anu.

The other 3 collisions were detected between August nine and twenty seven, 2017 at a distance between 3 billion and 6 billion light years away, and the resulting black holes were fifty six to sixty six times larger than the sun.

“These were from four different binary black hole systems smashing along and radiating strong gravitative waves out into space,” Scott said.

The expert stressed that observing these collisions can help to better perceive how many binary black hole systems exist in the universe, as well as the range of their masses and also the speed with that they spin during a merger.

The researchers detected the collisions after re-analyzing the gravitational wave information obtained by the LIGO.

Gravitational waves, whose existence Albert Einstein predicted a century ago, are space-time vibrations that produce some of the most violent incidents within the Universe — like explosions of stars — that generate large amounts of energy.

In the last 3 years, the international team of scientists has detected gravitational waves from 10 mergers of black holes and the collision of 1 star, the densest stars in the Universe with a diameter of about twenty kilometres.